Finnish Pavilions

With Finnish Pavilions (2012), Anu Pennanen explores the concept of national identity through the architecture of imaginary Finnish pavilions. The installation is constructed of polystyrene, a plastic material widely used for insulation and packaging, and which is usually discarded after use. The Pavilions are made of ‘ready-made’ packages or sculpted from prefabricated insulation sheets to resemble bits and pieces of certain key works of Finnish modernism. Before constructing Finnish Pavilions, I interviewed senior citizens in Helsinki. Their testimonies helped me to better understand the fragile nature of the generations’ experiences behind the official images of a nation they built. The soundtrack, composed with sounds produced with polystyrene, travels under the installation from its one end to the other, navigating the frontiers of abstract and narrative.